Clearly, Newt is as surprised as the rest of us by his sudden rise:
Yahoo! News reported that phones for Newt Gingrich’s Iowa campaign office finally arrived on Tuesday, exactly one month before the state’s caucuses.
Ron Paul, meanwhile, has been there for months, with an impressive and impassioned ground game. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm going all-in with FNC this primary season. I don't know how else to cover it, except in its own media cocoon – which turns out to be Gingrich's base. And I notice that there's an obvious Ailes-dictated line whenever Ron Paul's name comes up. Hannity and O'Reilly barely mention him, but when they do, they look into the camera and say he has zero percent chance of winning the nomination. Zero. And yet Ron Paul is now tied for second in Iowa and third in New Hampshire. Nationally, Paul outpolled Gingrich from May to October.
Now I know the odds of Paul winning the nomination are not high. But they are now and long have been clearly more promising than Perry, Bachmann, Santorum or Huntsman. The reason for the bizarre exclusion, I suspect, is that his foreign policy dissent renders him unacceptable to a party establishment long wedded to permanent warfare and global hegemony. Paul's exclusion from the Israel Lobby panderthon yesterday was another sign of his unfair treatment by the party. But who provided the message in 2008 that ended up dominating the campaign of 2011? Who isn't a flip-flopper? Who doesn't have glaring personal flaws?
What is the GOP scared of? A man the public knows is sincere? The most dedicated defender of liberty in his party?
